


"Doorwaystuck" AU

by Scedasticity



Series: AU sketches [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Every Heart a Doorway AU, Gen, not actually a proper story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 19:51:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9253520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scedasticity/pseuds/Scedasticity
Summary: Sketches for a Homestuck "Every Heart a Doorway" AU/fusion/crossover I will probably not actually write.





	1. Beta Kids

**Author's Note:**

> This won't make any sense at all if you haven't read Every Heart a Doorway -- consider doing that! I'm not tagging it as a fandom, though, because I don't want to be cluttering up the rather sparse tag with non-stories that don't even involve the proper characters.

Rose silently disappeared while her mother was drinking and reappeared exactly thirteen hours later, coated in unidentifiable black goo and speaking in tongues. She spent a week in the hospital before she fully figured out how to talk and eat and breathe like a human and not a horrorterror, and she still screams in her sleep sometimes (not because she’s distressed, it just seems like the thing to do). Rose’s mom had her own journey as a child, and never really got over it (see: the drinking), but she knew about the school and sent Rose off as soon as she could travel. Rose didn’t realize her mother really did believe her until she arrived. Rose’s world is difficult to classify, because it has rules and a hierarchy and follows them, but the rules are kind of brain-breaky to humans. Rose immediately starts lobbying for a new category, Eldritch. Rose claims her feelings on going back cannot be expressed in human language, but she may be lying.

John fell out a ground floor window and landed in basically LOWAS, where he heroically saved the salamanders! and got awesome powers! and negotiated with Typheus! And the price of freeing the salamanders was his leaving forever, and he landed in the bushes under the window four and a half months later, Earth time. He misses LOWAS terribly, but he WAS desperately lonely while he was there, so his feelings are… mixed, not that he wants to admit it. And he keeps forgetting he can’t fly. He thinks his dad thinks he’s nuts, but who knows what he actually thinks. LOWAS is tentatively evaluated as medium-Nonsense, medium-Virtue.

After Jade’s grandpa died she went to basically Prospit, and stayed there, for like ten years. The queen sent her back because Prospit was losing the war and she wanted Jade to be safe. Jade was heartbroken, and had vanished off the face of the Earth for ten years and didn’t have any surviving family to begin with – Eleanor found her about a week before she was planning to run away and live in the woods with this MASSIVE feral dog she befriended. The feral dog may or may not have followed her and be living in the woods near the school. (Spoiler alert: he did.) Most people are not thrilled about this, it’s not like the dog is even from Prospit! Jade says maybe he had his own world-crossing experience. Prospit is clearly high Virtue, and descriptions of it sound high Logic, but Jade seems like a Nonsense-y person so the verdict is out. Jade wants to go back to Prospit, but is sure she won’t be able to until she finds a way to save Prospit.

Dave ended up at the school because, under the influence of painkillers, he told doctors he jumped off the roof of the building trying to go back to Clockwork. Clockwork is LOHAC with somewhat less lava, full of scheming, stock-trading nakkodiles and ceaselessly screeching gears; it’s Nonsense-y and neutral. Hephaestus is the distant, aloof ruler. Dave defeated a demon Cal who would have destroyed everything for the sake of destruction; then he got sent back and he doesn’t know why. Turns out he prefers screeching gears and nakkodiles to life in his old home. A lot of people end up really confused about Dave’s history because he doesn’t differentiate between parts well in the telling, and a lot of his life on Earth sounds like it could come from a high-Nonsense high-Wickedness world. He’s still processing the concept that there may be other options.


	2. Alpha kids edition

Roxy spent years in a post-apocalyptic floating village of chess people, it’s really the only life she can remember, but they sent her back to ‘be with her own kind’, and possibly to save the world? (She mostly ignores that part.) She doesn’t expect to be able to return, but it’s her entire past, she doesn’t want to deny it, either. (Logic/Neutral) 

Jake didn’t know he was in another world until he stumbled, or rather washed away on a raft, back out of it – he just accepted that the Island of Adventure he was stranded on naturally had monsters and blue people and temples and whatnot. He feels like he should be able to come and go, he’s sure he could come and go, if he could only get a plane or a boat or some way to search the Pacific and find it. He was missing for under a week, but for him it was years. (Nonsense/Neutral) 

Dirk went to Derse every night from when he was very young, but after he led the uprising, he stopped going back. He has convinced himself that they were just using him to lead their revolution and now that they don’t need him any more they don’t want him, and that there’s nothing wrong with that. He’s afraid the uprising got crushed and that’s why he can’t go back. He isn’t used to sleeping and isn’t very good at it. (Logic/Wickedness) 

Jane – I’m departing more here – Jane followed the smell of a baking cake and ended up in a fantastic land where the queen adopted her as her heir, only the queen was also an evil witch and the adoption came with ensorcelment. Jane bided her time and buried her plots deep even as she was required to carry out the queen’s evil commands, and eventually she surprised the queen with an exploding cake and escaped. She wants to go back to KILL HER. Also she has developed a post-trauma response to baking and a reflexively hostile attitude towards authority. Her dad is really worried, and believes she was kidnapped – and technically she was, just very unusually. (Unknown/Wickedness)


	3. Trolls (and cherubs) edition

Trolls are harder, since they need to be humanstuck versions to begin with, and then there’s all that interpersonal history to account for somehow… Maybe they were all previously at another school which was run by an unscrupulous gentleman by the name of Scratch, and which was finally shut down by joint efforts of some of Eleanor’s alumni and local authorities.

It was probably called the Excellent Hostelry or something. Heck, let’s put the cherubs there, too.

Anyway some rough shit went down there, both with Scratch directly and with Scratch encouraging them to turn on each other. They mostly won’t talk about it.

No one knows exactly what Vriska’s world was like, or what happened there, because her story keeps changing every time she tells it. Pirates were involved somehow. Someone named Mindfang was involved somehow, either as Vriska’s mentor, the identity Vriska adopted, or both. She probably spent years there. She associates people from that world strongly enough with Terezi, Eridan, and Tavros that she seems to get them mixed up. High Wickedness, and maybe Nonsense? Depends on how much of Vriska’s detachment from reality is due to her travels. I sort of want to call the place Pirates World, my condolences if you know where that’s from. –Oh, and she came back with a magic eye she could see through things and hypnotize people with, but at some point at Scratch’s someone tried to put it out with a stick, and it hasn’t fully healed.

Terezi lived with dragons. She worked for a dragon investigator, accessing places the dragon was too big for to gather clues and helping put together cases. She willingly agreed to be blinded (and learn smellovision) to qualify as a justice-seeker. She was tracking a criminal when she somehow ended up in the tree she climbed to get on originally. She wants desperately to go back, but over time has started convincing herself she’s not worthy. Virtue/Logic.

Kanaya went to a bright, sun-drenched land full of darkness-hating vampires and undead. She thrived for several years, but then there was a dispute with the local lord over whether they were engaged and she left. May or may not be a “sun vampire”. Difficult to classify.

Tavros basically went to Neverland, and he had a great time there, but he was worried about his family so he came back, and then he couldn’t go back. Vriska did a number on him at Scratch’s place, most spectacularly when she made him jump off a roof. Fortunately qualified help arrived quickly and immobilized his spine, so there was little irreparable nerve damage and he’s on track to recover almost all function, eventually. Nonsense/Virtue.

Gamzee’s world is also little-understood due to poor communication – he just describes it as the Dark Carnival – but it seems to have caused a drastic personality change. He bludgeoned the neighbor’s cat before they sent him to school, and there have been several close calls involving humans. Wickedness, and probably Nonsense.

Aradia went to basically the dream bubbles, with the power to roam them at will, and is INTENSELY depressed about losing it. Though these days she says she’s ok with it. Nonsense, probably Virtue?

Sollux was in a virtual reality cyber world. (When Cyber World entities were captured by the non-cyber entities around them, they were enslaved to run machinery a la helmsmen.) If he can’t go back, he plans to create a cyber world on Earth, who cares if the tech is questionable? Logic/Wickedness?

Feferi was scuba diving when she found her way through a portal to a mermaid realm. They adopted her and gave her the ability to breathe underwater (which she still has as long as she BELIEVES she can). She came back intending just to tell her family that she hadn’t drowned, but then they wouldn’t let her get back in the prearranged window, and in fact wouldn’t let her near the ocean at all. Virtue/probably Nonsense?

Eridan was a mopey nerd who couldn’t understand why no one wanted to date him; he came back from LOWAA a hypervigilant marksman insisting that he needs to find a way back so he can kill the rest of the angels. Why? Because. (Scratch let him have a rifle. There were incidents.) Wickedness/Unknown (he says Logic, but the descriptions sound pretty nonsensical.)

Nepeta was gone for several years, no time dilation, running wild in a primeval forest with a band of cat people. She prefers to eat raw meat and, weather permitting, not wear clothes. Virtue/Nonsense?

Equius… hmm. Centaurs? Robot-builders? Robot-building centaurs. With a very… interesting aesthetic. Certain other students have suggested a “Perversion” axis be added especially for his world, because it doesn’t seem cruel enough to be wicked but you can’t possibly call that virtuous. The adults try to be less judgmental, but do feel Equius was perhaps a little young when he went there.

Aaaand rounding out the trolls, Karkat went to a dark city run by the Midnight Crew and the Felt. He fell in with a ragtag band of underdogs trying to stand up to both gangs. Karkat ended up back on Earth when he was caught in an explosion (probably the work of Clubs Deuce). Wickedness/Logic, but Karkat will loudly tell anyone willing to listen it was actually Nonsense/Nonsense, like every fucking thing else.

Bonus: Calliope and Caliborn went to the same world, but ended up on opposite sides of a war – which they both would have predicted tbh. They also ended up transformed into different species (fairy? elf? goblin? green skeleton monster? idk) and spent some time that way, enough so that they’re both now very uncomfortable as humans.


	4. How do they fit in at the school?

Some people asked about character interaction– Starting with the kids because the (human versions of the) trolls arrive with additional complications:

John, Jake, and Jade are able to fit in with the student body without much trouble, though someone is going to prankster John’s gambit if he doesn’t cut back a bit. They’re weird, but it’s a familiar weird. Roxy’s world and experience was very outside the norm, but Roxy is friendly and funny and not at all scary in how she acts, so people like her.

Dave and Jane unnerve people with the abuse responses – especially Dave. Jane’s experience is more extreme, but it’s not unheard of to be captured by an enemy – it’s just that she’s so angry about it. Dave most of them don’t know how to react to because his Earth life is as alien as his world. Dave is jittery about humans in person and it has nothing to do with Clockwork.

Dirk and Rose are widely regarded as creepy, and they both keep encouraging it. Dirk can’t keep himself from manipulating situations. Rose still messes around with grimoires and no one really wants Fthluthlu (sp?) summoned in the dining hall. (Probably not even Rose, but good luck getting her to admit that.)

The trolls (and cherubs) come in with the whole Scratch thing in their immediate past, so even the most normal-for-the-setting are looked at a little funny and are a little prickly.

Still, Tavros and Feferi do mostly okay, when people aren’t gossiping about the attempted murder in front of them. Tavros isn’t as included as he might be due to still limited mobility, which sucks.

Calliope’s social skills aren’t the best, the possible species dysphoria is a bit out there, and she does tend to write RPF about people she knows, but she’s still a sweetheart. Karkat is of course snarl-coated marshmallow fluff who wants to take care of everyone. His weird gang-filled film noire world is strange, but people who take the time to get to know him like him.

Kanaya is generally regarded as ‘cool’, but the vampire thing makes people nervous about getting too close. Terezi is sometimes awesome, but the rest of the time she keeps licking. Things. And also she threatens to have people put to death a lot. Aradia and Sollux are both actively pushing everyone away, although Sollux will make computer-related exceptions.

Sometimes Nepeta’s acting like a cat is cute, sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s annoying, and sometimes it’s *you were asked to at least put on clothing **in the dining hall**!!!!* She’s inadvertently sparked a heated debate about nudity and appropriate responses thereto. Equius is even worse. His first roommate couldn’t take even twelve hours with the posters.

Eridan’s first roommate assignment turned out even worse, as the roommate got up in the middle of the night, and Eridan woke up, assumed the silhouette was an angel, and broke his roommate’s jaw. Could have happened to anyone, really. They didn’t give Gamzee a roommate, as no one is completely sure he isn’t plotting Dark Carnival-themed violence at any given moment.

And then there’s Vriska, and there’s Caliborn, each of whom is UNSHAKEABLY CONVINCED that THEY are normal, and everyone else is insane. Vriska tends to come off as slightly more socially acceptable because at least she isn’t blatantly misogynistic, but put her around anyone vulnerable and opinions change fast.

**Author's Note:**

> There may be more here at some point, but probably not a proper story ever. If anyone wants to do anything in this AU, please go ahead! Also please tell me. :)


End file.
